Posts by Dan

Cops harras student, steal computers.

Seriously, the crimes alleged are "Sending two emails" "Downloading music"."Gaining access to the grading systems" and "Securing information on computers so that it cannot be retrieved" The judge here rightly threw out the first and last as not illegal, then says that the 'informant' did not provide reliable information regarding the other two.

Interesting note: The cops apparently haven't broken the encryption on any of the computers, since they were not done examining them. Maybe they should consider hiring a recently graduated compsci major for in-house forensic computer work?

Oh, and the warrant was apparently for "objects capable of storing digital data in any form", which is why the camera, laptop, cd's, and probably anything else with a battery or power cord was seized.

Magic database!

"...ministerial assurances on security provisions that will accompany the roll-out of the directory system."

"... social workers, police, schools and health officials will have access to data held on the ContactPoint database."

So, is the database secure, or does world+dog+cat have -official- access to it?

HACKING?!?

Assume: The computer had internet access. He was permitted to use the computer. Therefore, he was permitted to use the computer to access the internet, send and receive packets.

Once a packet leaves his employer's network, it cannot violate any access limits set by his employer. Therefore, sending packets to AdultFriendFinder.com is not hacking his work computer any more than sending packets to the DNS lookup server.

Therefore: He was not permitted to use the computer to access the internet. If we assume that it was configured for automatic updates, he was not permitted to log on, since that would cause packets to be sent and received outside the company network. Therefore, he was not permitted to use the computer AT ALL. That's the only logical cause of the courts' decisions.

And they found 700+ photos in "Routine maintenance"? Either he was VERY careless, or "Routine maintenance" is a euphemism for "Spying on internet histories and user activities".

Good luck with the takedowns.

I foresee TPB making a new category: Exams.

Or better yet, Let them steal the exam for you: Just post every question that could be on the exam on a UK ISP. The questions that get taken down are the ones on the exam.

Seriously, guys?

Do you think that anyone, anywhere, will pay more than $1 for some stranger's medical records.

My opening bid is $4, plus actual shipping charges.

Is it over yet?

From the * I Ass.'s view, the worst thing that could happen would be TPB's crew shutting up and quietly going to jail. No publicity, no more furor, and leave the server running. If someone can come up with a truly anonymous way to maintain the server, perhaps from a Chinese proxy server, then the entire farce can continue.

Also, doesn't the prosecution have to prove that a crime was committed under -Swedish- law?

Has there been any illegal transfer actually facilitated by their site?

So far that has been presumed to be true, but is it a crime in Sweden to help a Yank to transmit a number to a Brit at an address relayed through Sweden? Is it a crime in Sweden for a Swede to help a Yank evade US taxes?

Put another way, would Sweden take a Chinese demand for extradition of everyone who assisted Chinese citizens in their exercise of free speech?

Interesting offer...

I have five hundred quid in small bills if you tell me the root password for your work system.

Something which could never be traced to you, with a cash offer? Of course, it would probably take a few tries to get a real password, and you might trip a few alarms if you hit someone honest first.

But I bet there's a lot of money to be made from just one companies network.

Reuters?

Once a company signs up to this service, it becomes licensed use and not stealing. Better to file suit against the infringers, then get the banking details from the ad networks for to seize their valuable assets.

Obviously not accidental, nor inflicted by a third party.

Since the PORN is not hidden as 'adult' material, the delisting is not due to an 'adult' filter.

Since the world has retailiated against the presumed radical Christian instigator, every version of the Bible has been tagged with 'Adult, Hate, Hate Crimes, Genocide, Gay, Gay Porn' several thousand times. Yet they still show up in searches and rankings. Therefore, it is not an automatic response to users tagging books with 'adult' tags.

Since the "Gay bashing" books^H^H^H^H^H works of hate of are not excluded, even though they have a particular synonym for 'happy' in their title, it wasn't due to a filter culling everything with 'gay' in the title or synopsis.

Unless I see a more complete list of works that have been delisted, and it supports the theory of incompetence, I have to conclude that this is a malicious attack against gays. Incompetence is not a credible cause at this point.

First they delisted the gays, and I DID speak up, because I am not a gay.

-With profound respect for the intentions of the original author.

@ Lee Jackson

Go with the right analogy. TPB is the photographer's guide that taught your neighbor how to take pictures of your landscaping. When he hung the pictures of YOUR hard work in his house without paying you, you claimed damages equal to what you spent on the landscaping. From the publisher of the photographer's guide.

Wait...

So, the people who are reviewing the source code would not have access to networking, their own computer, or paper and pencil to take notes? They would be reduced to coming in to view the evidence, then leaving to write notes, repeat?

How is releasing the information one headful at a time less damaging than releasing it freely? Or is this a dodge to 'technically' comply with the court order, without giving the opposing part a chance to actually review the information in a meaningful way?

Fact-Checking FAIL

Back in 1980s and 90s you could either buy an Apple Mac from Apple or a Windows machine from everyone else.

Interesting, then, that I was running PRODOS, MS-DOS, and DR-DOS during that period, and only the school system was running Macintosh. (Mostly, even they were running PRODOS well into the 1990s.)

So many security flaws...

I can grant that the keyloggers would be enough to get in and change the grades. But a simple audit should have shown all the changed grades, and reversed the changes. detection + 30 minutes, the damage should have been reversed.

Then they fall for the keyloggers again. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Having gotten the passwords, the group... uses them? Wrong course of action. Use a good Russian proxy, and change the grades of someone you don't know. Adjust them up by one letter. That person will get the blame, or the intrusion will remain undetected.

If the intrusion remains undetected, then the passwords will still stay the same, and you can make some other changes as well.

I'm going to offer 'defective' models.

My transmitters will randomly change their serial number or vehicle make/model/owner on every startup. As well, they will inaccurately report position by 0-30 meters each startup, slowly improving their accuracy to meet standards within the first minute.

I figure every privacy nut out there will buy one, even if they just put in in their handbag, or on thier bike, or hide it on the bus. Let's make the signal/noise ratio a favorable one for privacy, shall we?

@ AC 29th March 2009 11:52 GMT

I love the way you made up actual numbers that are an order of magnitude different from the easy to find real numbers. Even given the US/UK million/billion/trillion mismatch, you're quite a hoot.

Actual total estimate of bailout costs: ~$1 trillion US. That's $1*10^12.

Your assertion: $12 trillion,

Error factor: 11

Typical acceptable error factors: 0-3

(Yes, the fact that I just needed engineering notation to make the numbers clear is itself an indictment)

However you put it, the money lost to bad loans has ALREADY left the economy. (It is debatable if the value of the real property never got as high as the price, or if the value rose and then sharply fell. Either way, value was expended and removed.) Now, the US has a similar total total domestic value to what it had about 10 years ago, and ~7% LESS money.

If you think having 7% less money isn't a big issue, then I ask: is 7% ADDITIONAL unemployment a big issue? Would a 7% pay cut be a big issue? How badly would across-the-board deflation of 7% hit a small business, given that their loans are fixed rate, and the inventory they have has a fixed dollar cost? (Prices CAN'T go down right away; a 7% drop in retail price means a ~14% drop in unit profit before fixed expenses (at x2 markup, typical for a small retailer). If fixed expenses (~50% of total expenses) also go down by 7%, then your typical small retailer has their bottom line drop by about 11.5% of their revenue. If their total margins were that high to begin with, they wouldn't be a small business for long.

Numbers example:

Wholesale unit cost: $10

Retail unit price: $20

Fixed expenses (lease, payroll, loan payments, etc): $6000/month

Sales: 700/month.

sales X marginal profit = $7000/month, - fixed expenses = $1000/month for the owner to live on.

Drop the price by 7%, to $18.60/ unit. Now you have $6,020/month from sales, -$6000/month expenses, the owner gets $20 a month.

In an ideal economy, the wholesale price would rapidly drop, as would the fixed expenses, however nobody can afford to drop their prices first: The wholesaler has a similar problem, shift raw materials for wholesale price and wholesale price for retail price, and the labor can't get less expensive before everyone's goods get less expensive.

The voting public would never go for government-run corporations, so the only way to control the economy is to keep the available money equal to the available value.

Put differently, if the money supply is kept constant, as by a gold standard or similar gimmick, then eventually a few tycoons will have -all- the money, and nobody else will have any. (If one consistently earns more than one spends, one's money will always go up. Eventually, it must reach the point where there is no money one doesn't have. Therefore, it is impossible for one to spend less than all the money one makes. Since long-term saving is IMPOSSIBLE, investments or large business loans don't happen, and the economy stalls from the top.

Fiat currency, released in the form of deficit spending, allows the money supply to remain equal to the total value of goods and services provided. The current issue is that the supply is poorly controlled. Also note that in cases of massive reduction of value -without- an associated reduction in money would require that money be removed- I.E. taxed from the public and NOT spent, ever. This could occur if a trillion dollars of -uninsured- consumer goods were to catch fire and be burned, bankrupting the owner(s) and the owner(s) lender(s) but the money that would have bought those goods is still in the market. (If they were insured, then the insurance company loses money roughly equal to the lost value. If the owner(s) can withstand the loss, they have lost the money. If the lender(s) withstand the loss, then they provide the money. However, if the lender(s) cannot float the damage, then EVERYONE pays. A total of a trillion dollars needs to be thrown away. (How about we (on paper) give it to the banks, allowing the previous economy to resume, and mandate additional fire protections?)

Wait, that's what the issue is about?

Rich got it right...

There are plenty of jurisdictions where using a device to count cards is not illegal, but will get you thrown out. This app is obviously designed for those places.

Note that if you just count cards and raise your bet when the odds favor you, will will get kicked out before you make ANY profit- The dealer is also counting the cards; While he doesn't change his strategy because of it, he knows when the count is good.

Follow the money... @ Gerrit

"That teenage boy at at a Western Union" can be made to give up what he did with the cash trail real easy. Take the judgment, and take his parent's house, car, and all of their possessions. Unless he can prove that he is not the person that they just won against in court. This is shaping up to make Verizon the new RIAA.

Frankly, they don't even have proof that the same person was behind each of these domains, and they still need to prove service of the proper process. Good luck doing that in China.

Single-engine failure...

"all military pilots train for a single-engine failure, although it's a rare event"

Technically true, although it would be far more accurate to say that all pilots train for single-engine failure, even those who are only rated for single-engine aircraft. Lose an engine? Fly to the nearest airport that can land you- and a proper preflight means that you always know exactly where that is.

The pilot ejected, said the article. What of the navigator?

TANSTAAFL

So... Who pays for the cellular tower, network, and other mobile phone hardware, maintenance, etc., and in what proportion? Pass that cost on to mobile users, in the form of charging them based on their bandwidth usage, adjusted for demand where possible.

That, by the way, IS the US model- Customers either pay per minute that they are on the phone, or pay a premium not to pay per minute. Yes, there are options available, starting at about 50£ ($100) per month. Add to that your data plan (anywhere from cost per kilobit to an additional 10£ (20$) per month), and your messaging add-on (from .05£ ($0.10) per message to another 10£ (20$) per month), as well as fees, taxes, fees, assesments, fees, charges, and fees, and you end up paying dearly in order to not pay for anything.

As to the 'termination fee', which I assume is a per-call payment, by and to whom is it paid, and for what reason? Surely not from the telco who owns any of the infrastructure being used to someone who does not?!? I would assume that all the costs of expanding and maintaining the switched telephone network would be born by the owning telecomm companies, and recouped from their customers in whatever manner mutually agreed. Forgive a poor American for not knowing what kind of idiocy goes on on the other side of the pond. I've got enough idiocy on mine.

(And apolo(u)gies for all the parentheticals (especially the nested ones(even the ones needed for translation))).

Pay peanuts, get monkeys...

The average gate gaurd is bottom rung, and gets paid (according to the latest charts) $1347-$1789 (£669-£888) per MONTH.

http://www.dfas.mil/militarypay/militarypaytables/2008MilitaryPayCharts35.pdf

They normally work 8-12 hour ROTATING shifts, (Seven days 0000-1200, two days off, seven days 1200-2400, two days off, seven days 0800-2000, two days off, then four more days 0800-2000, four days off is an actual schedule for a military school.)

The military does not pay overtime. Ever. For any reason.

Microsoft! merger! confuses! Reg! hacks!

Just throw random! bangs around in any article! that mentions Microsoft! or the old Yahoo!

@James Hunter

Use demographics instead!

http://xkcd.com/190/

The scary thing is...

amanfrom mars is making more sense in this discussion than anyone else.

Omitted:

Was this, in fact, a work of art which she had been wearing all day, and intended to wear for the rest of the day, or just one which she wore to the airport to cause trouble?

That should be the distiction that determines wether this is a case of tweaking the airport security, or the airport security being tweakers.

50% more CO2?

Al Gore told me that unless we did something CO2 levels would rise to several hundred times their current level by this coming Sunday- Shouldn't we be testing tress at that level?

Hear, Hear

Finally... Having spent time as a Sprint/Nextel customer care rep, where I had to deal with callers cursing both at the company and at me, personally; callers trying to commit various forms of fraud; and callers who were, apparently, disgruntled ex-technicians because they would order repetitive changes which would often crash the database.

When customer care agents are able to recognize by name and voice individual customers over a months-long period, then those customers are a problem, and are no longer profitable to Sprint. Cutting costs in customer service does not always mean giving jobs to India- I applaud Sprint/Nextel for finally doing something that might be interperted as caring about their customer service.

re: re: Common sense?

>Even 'arc eye' caused by welders can take hours before you realise damage is done, and by jimminy

>does that hurt at that point.

Arc eye might not hurt for hours, but you know instantly that you just looked at a chunk of plasma brighter than the sun. Anyone smart enough to not look at the sun will know that eye damage is imminent;

Also, according to college level textbooks (Weld 107, Welding Technical Orientation, 2006, C. Hobson) arc eye rarely causes permanent damage- If the light from these projectors is not causing sunburn, it is less intense and, logically, should not be doing as much damage.

"Unlimited" data

I can only speak with experience as to Nextel (now Sprint, but not really) data pricing - and thier unlimited data plans allow for any amount of traffic, at a fairly reasonable price ($10-$20/month additional, and include varying amounts of text or MMS messages, neither of which are SMS messages)

The alternative is a $0.015/kb charge. The value was set in the early days of wireless data... it doesn't seem like much, until you realize that it is $15.36/MB, and some of the early adopters of the smartphones were using them to browse graphics-intensive websites daily.

Not enough information: Mineshafts

Relevant questions:

Does the cart start at the top, or the bottom of the shaft? Are there already people in the cart?

Irrelevant question:

From what location(s) is the cart controlled? (If an operator is needed IN the cart to bring it back down, then only 9 people can be evacuated per trip, except on the last trip. For the specific case given, it makes no difference. A proper question would have 37 people in the mine, which would require 4 trips ( 10-1+10-1+10-1+10=37) to evacuate everyone.)

(apologized for the long, (nested) parentehticals)